CPS bites the bullet

Lawyers have had plenty of ammunition to criticise the crown prosecution service in recent years.

Stephen Ward looks at its efforts to improve, helped by an extra 100 million funding

'My wife's school had more advanced computers than we did,' Peter Lewis, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Nottinghamshire, recalls.

And he is not talking about the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in its early days, but his office as it was at the start of 2001.It is a graphic illustration of what everybody from politicians to judges and defence solicitors now accepts has been a chronically under-funded service from its inception in 1986.Before the arrival of a new computer network, which by the end of this year will link the 42 CPS offices for the first time, Mr Lewis, a solicitor who worked on policy in the CPS head office until two years ago, says: 'We had 130 people in the office here, and five PCs.

There was no Internet.

There was some case-tracking software, but we lacked all the things everybody else [in the criminal justice system] had.

I could do more with my computer at home.'But that under-funding has begun to change.

Last July's public spending round gave the CPS an extra 71.3 million, and at the start of this year another 30.4 million was allocated.The extra money is all intended to consolidate organisational changes in 1998 and 1999, which came after David Calvert-Smith QC succeeded Dame Barbara Mills as Director of Public Prosecutions at the head of the service.

Crucially, a chief executive was appointed for the first time, although he is about to leave, and the regions were re-organised into 42 areas each corresponding to a police force, rather than the previous 13 regions, which arguably corresponded to nothing much.The service is also trying to put behind itself accusations of racism which have surfaced in several forms.

A full tribunal hearing into claims by CPS solicitor Rav Johal that his employers discriminated against him on grounds of race is expected this year (see [2001] Gazette, 28 June, 4).The final report by an academic, Sylvia Denman, who was asked by the CPS to investigate institutional racism at the organisation, is expected this month, with a report by the Commission for Racial Equality into the alleged segregation of black and white lawyers at the CPS's Croydon office expected soon afterwards.

Last year, a senior prosecutor, Maria Bamieh, won an employment tribunal action for race and sex discrimination against the CPS.The organisation has already responded with initiatives, which include a diversity unit and the National Black Crown Prosecution Association, though leading CPS players on all sides are awaiting the various reports and hearings before commenting in depth on the race issue.Other wider and deeper concerns about the service continue to be aired.

The worry, as expressed by senior criminal law practitioners, is that for all the new money and the re-organisations, the reality is still not much different in 2001 from in 1998 when former Court of Appeal judge Sir Iain Glidewell delivered his report into the CPS - highlighting major deficiencies in its management style and delivery of service, which in turn led to the latest re-organisation.Franklin Sinclair is senior partner at Tuckers, a Manchester-based criminal law specialist firm, and chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association.

He says, after checking with six of his solicitors, who are in day-to-day contact with the CPS in the magistrates' courts: 'I don't think there has been any great effect yet from the changes.'Ben Brandon, a partner at London firm Russell Jones & Walker, who deals with mainly white-collar crime, and mostly bigger cases, adds: 'They are still over-worked, under-resourced and under-staffed.

There are some good people at the CPS but unfortunately they are let down by the systems there.' Mr Brandon says he notices - particularly when he is representing a privately funded defendant - that the CPS has fewer resources than he does.Malcolm Fowler, partner at Birmingham firm Jonas Roy Bloom, maintains that while he recognises the effort the CPS has put in under Mr Calvert-Smith, 'the improvements in resources are coming from such a long way back that there is still a mountain to climb'.Mr Fowler, who is chairman of the Law Society's criminal law committee, says a major problem for the CPS is that - like everybody else in the criminal justice system - it is operating in a context of constant flux from government-imposed timetables, targets and funding changes.'This is a government which feels it's doing nothing unless it's changing the system all the time,' he complains.

He gives the example of fast-tracking cases of young offenders in the hope of preventing them becoming adult serial offenders.

'If you fast-track one section of cases, without providing extra resources, all the other cases suffer by being pushed back,' he says.But the CPS itself insists that the changes are working through, and stresses that they inevitably take time to have an effect.

For example, in January, a recruitment campaign advertised for 100 new crown prosecutors.

Mr Lewis confidently hopes these will be a catalyst for the long-awaited improvements finally to start to show through.But before the new staff could begin, they had to be chosen carefully, then they had to give notice, and to go on induction and training courses.

His region hired five in the first wave, but they only came on board this month.

That timescale will be similar across the service, he says.But from now on, he is bullish about the benefit to culture and morale from the recruitment.

'You wouldn't believe the effect of these enthusiastic people who are here by choice, because they want to be.

They are motivated, they have chosen to join from outside, and you could see it immediately encouraged the others, to see them arrive.'For everybody, it represents not only more hands on deck, allowing them all to do their jobs better, but a sign of ambition and progress, Mr Lewis says.The improved technology has given a psychological as well as a practical boost to CPS staff, he says.

'It was a sign that we were investing in them - that they are important.'Mr Calvert-Smith's leadership seems to have helped morale, too.

The CPS was not a particularly happy ship under Barbara Mills, for reasons connected with her, such as her management style, and other reasons she had no control over, such as funding.

Privately, many say more strongly what Mr Fowler voices when he says diplomatically: 'There were weaknesses under the previous regime.'And there have been changes in attitude noticeable to outsiders as well as internally.

Mr Fowler says the CPS is no longer trying to dictate everything from the top down, and from the centre outwards.

'They are now consulting with others in the criminal justice system,' he says.

And Mr Fowler adds many of the 42 new chief crown prosecutors are now playing more of the the role envisaged in the Glidewell report as 'people of stature on a par with chief constables', and with a public presence.

The Glidewell report also recommended that CPS lawyers should spend more of their time prosecuting; the administrative burden on them had been a common complaint.

Mr Lewis says this is happening.The process is similar to the logic behind the magic-circle City law firms, which now train all their litigators as advocates with higher court rights of audience.

Mr Lewis says: 'They are already doing a lot more contentious work, and appeals against sentence and conviction.

Some have started to do jury trials.' But the main hope is that they will have a better feel for the courts, for how judges react.'They will all get in-court experience on their feet,' he says.

'It means they will prepare cases better.'So far this improvement is apparently not uniform across the country.

In Manchester, for example, Mr Sinclair reports that fewer cases are handled by in-house prosecutors, and that the advocates are being briefed the night before or on the morning of cases.

'That means they are not well-prepared, which gives us an advantage,' he says.The CPS sets great store by new trials units being introduced gradually across the service, which will address a complaint voiced by Mr Brandon, who says: 'It never ceases to amaze me that - other than in the big cases - you have to deal with a different lawyer each time you pick up the phone to the CPS.

This is a waste of time and money.

Because you can't build up a relationship with the prosecutor, you cannot reach agreements in advance.' The trials units, concentrating on the Crown Courts, will assign a single team to a case, and they will stay with it.The consensus among the criminal practitioners seems to be that there are grounds for optimism in the CPS, but the jury is still out.

Mr Brandon is probably right when he says the most important change, or test of change, will be whether the DPP can make the CPS prestigious to work for.'I know successful lawyers in private practice in the US who started in the District Attorney's office [the equivalent of the CPS].

It's a 50-50 career choice there for a lot of criminal lawyers starting out whether to defend of prosecute,' he says.

He contrasts that with this country where he says there are good lawyers in the CPS, but at the moment few private firms would see the experience as a major asset on a curriculum vitae.Mr Calvert-Smith, more than most, must be hoping that this situation can be changed.Stephen Ward is a freelance journalist